You may have noticed that Obama announced a lot of staffing positions today for the general election. Among his choices is former Clinton campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle, who has been hired to be chief of staff to the vice-president. This has not been received well in Camp Clinton, which must mean it is not a precursor to Clinton getting the veep-spot.
“You don’t hire Patti Solis Doyle for her operational expertise. You don’t do that. This is someone who failed dramatically at her job. You only bring her on to fuck someone else.”
— A “former Clinton bundler,” quoted by the New York Observer, noting that “Clinton loyalists were livid over the pick.”
I find that all highly amusing. So sensitive.
Update [2008-6-16 18:31:30 by BooMan]: It gets better.
Obama spokesman Bill Burton said nothing could be inferred about Obama’s thoughts on a vice presidential candidate from the hiring of Solis Doyle, which was announced along with several other new posts Monday afternoon.
But a Clinton insider, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told CQ Politics that the subtext is clear.
“Translated subtitles aren’t necessary,” the insider said. “There is no other way to interpret this other than ‘[Expletive] you.’”
Interesting.
And in the biggest non-news of the day – Gore is set to endorse Obama tonight.
Cindy McCain caught with cribbed recipes…Again
Huffpost takes this headline:
Reheat Offender: Cindy Bakes another Whopper
You’d think they’d learn, wouldn’t you?
Well, you’d be wrong.
A little late, eh?
You can think it, but you can’t like, say it. That’s a bitter, bitter person, so…who do you think that was? Begala?
No, one of her big fundraisers.
If the bundler thought that it was “on background” then they had reason to expect that their actual quote would not be reported. If it was, indeed, “on background” then Mr. Horowitz may have some splainin’ to do…
i spose they will call her another Judas?
when will these peeps learn that it’s OVER?
Kerry did the same thing with an Edwards staffer before he got the nod.
Hmm, but Solis-Doyle? By all accounts she wasn’t that good either in HRC’s senate race or this year.
exception: accroding to reports, the two have not spoken since the firing.
By whose accounts? Who would be giving accounts besides Clinton insiders, and there would be motive to pin their failures on her.
In any case, I trust the Obama campaign’s judgment over the Clinton campaign’s. They won, Clinton’s lost.
Just saying.
This is strange. First, why hire someone who failed miserably at their last job? And second, why would Obama hire the VP’s chief of staff? Won’t he or she want to hire their own person?
Question:
Answer:
I believe Bill got the message…
Doyle is from Chicago, a prominent Hispanic, and longtime friend of David Axelrod, Obama’s campaign maven.
And a lot of Latinos were miffed at her firing…they voiced she was scapegoated.
The vee-pee gets handlers from the nominee’s staff. It’s normal.
Doyle didn’t run a winning campaign, but that was more Mark Penn’s fault than her’s. Most of all it sends a clear message that Ms. Clinton won’t be getting any consideration for the position. But, then, we knew that once Michelle Obama told people not to permit that RFK assassination talk about her husband.
And it sends a not-so-subtle message to pundits to STOP all of the “Will he pick Hillary for VP?” talk. The answer is no. Please move on, big media.
Al Giordano, who has MOVED after being censored at his old blog home, thinks Solis Doyle was a good manager who was scapegoated by Penn, Wolfson, McAwful, etc. when they started doing poorly. He thinks she’ll be great at this new job, but it does indicate that Hillary won’t be the Veep pick. But he thinks she’ll be a GREAT match for Sebelius.
I moved, too. Away from his blog. This is what I posted about it on dKos.
“He let his readers and posters know that:
too many people posted comments
he found many of those comments boring
he’d remove comments that didn’t maintain his point of view (not, mind you,
comments that were viscous, racist, sexist, untrue, inflammatory, etc.)
BUT
would his readers please send money so that he could go to Denver on someone else’s dime.
I bailed.”
Vicious not viscous! Although thick wouldn’t be all that inappropriate.
I’m sorry you feel that way. I think he’s a great force in Democratic politics right now. But the Democratic establishment feels threatened by it. He was censored because he dared speak of the great impact of Saul Alinski’s work in community organizing and dared to get his readers to join up in local groups to meet each other and discuss their ideas. Al Giordano is doing something that most bloggers haven’t been able to accomplish yet and he offers alot of insight into community organizing that most have no clue about.
There is an arrogance and lack of democratic spirit on his site. I enjoyed reading it for a number of months and occasionally commented until he spent a good deal of time in his comments dissing his readers and posters.
I haven’t read about the Aulinksy brouhaha since it apparently happened after I quit reading The Field, but it’s funny that Al should scream about censorship when he was very up front about his plan to remove all comments that were contrary to his viewpoint. As I said above, not objectionable for what I would consider valid reasons. But unacceptable because they didn’t fit his personal criteria. To hell with that.
Yeah. I hear you. He has an extremely high readership. And he wants to keep them on track for action. He has scolded us for doubting our candidate and the whole “Chicken Little” attitude that prevails in Democratic circles and he’s done us a huge service for doing it.
The owner of RuralVotes (Al’s former home) is a Democratic Party big-wig Superdelgate woman and she had a problem with him discussing Saul Alinsky (1909-1972.) She wanted him to delete his post about him. He refused. I was confused by it, since I’d never heard of the guy, and checked to see if my library had his last book “Rules For Radicals” (1971) and they had it! I checked it out and OH MY GOD what an education.
I think very highly of Al. That doesn’t mean I think any less of you. He’s just not your typical blogger. He’s been reporting (in print and radio) and working in politics for many years. Nowadays his work is primarily at NarcoNews, who reports on Central and South American countries and their political relationships with the US. Unlike most bloggers, he was NOT working for RuralVotes for free. He was paid. We readers liked the coverage so much that we also decided to send him to Texas and to Denver by paying for his travel expenses. We did this as readers who loved the coverage with his perspective. He didn’t need to beg. We insisted upon it.
I was one of the readers who paid to send him to TX.
She has her own strengths and/or contacts: she’s from Chicago and I think she has a relationship to Axelrod; also I believe she’s well-known in the Latino community.
And just because she may have been ill-suited for the Clinton campaign doesn’t mean the same for Obama. She’s not working in the same capacity.
But what I’d really like to know is when will folks close to the Clintons get around to blaming who I believe is REALLY at fault here–Mark Penn. Some folks seem to relish attacking Doyle but are real quiet when it comes to Penn…who obviously loves to regale people in tales of his brilliance.
Ironic, considering all the claims of sexism from some quarters.
Why can’t the boss (Hillary) take responsibility for the hires and their direction and supervision?
Coaches are re-hired, and they fail, too (so to speak).
Doyle’s firing parallels the sacrificial quality of the firing of a coach. Was there any reason to believe that Doyle was the reason the Clinton campaign did badly?
There’s a curious circularity to the logic here.
There’s also a Rorschach quality to this purported insult. The logic behind the “insult” conclusion is peculiarly elusive. Someone is stretching to find insults where none exists, which says something about them rather than the reason for her hiring.
I believe it all spawns from the Clintons’ sense of entitlement…
No, I think it is pretty clearly a message that Clinton will not be vee-pee. She fired Doyle and they are not currently on speaking terms. Think about it.
Where did the expectation that she actually was going to be the VP come from? — (and I know the media had a hand in it, too). Contrived outrage isn’t becoming.
And ‘name her VP or else’ is like blackmail. The language we often hear in regard to the VP is that he/she “earned” a spot on the ticket, not extorted.
great point Booman…a very skillful political move by the Obama camp. But I think she brings other qualities, ties to the Chicago Political Machine, reconcile with Clinton supporters and insight to large Mexican American voting block.
Honestly?
I don’t think this is front page material. Clinton lost, and there’s no need (IMO) to keep hammering away at the topic.
I would rather see something about the odious deal that the odious Steny Hoyer has cooked up on FISA.
With the support of Queen Nancy, the Tin Eared, of course.
FISA? Yeah, by all means, make some phone calls. Firedoglake and Greenwald are taking the lead on it and Kagro X at Daily Kos. They’re doing fine work.
Oh Jeeze…I’m almost afraid to click the link.
feingold and dodd have sent a “sternly worded letter” to the house and copied everybody in sight:
contacts:
harry reid
speaker pelosi
steny hoyer
pat leahy
john conyers
john rockefeller
silvestre reyes
house members
senators
let’s kill this thing off, eh.
In an Update (Update II) to this post, Glenn Greenwald today praises our boy Brendan for his good work in harassing our leaders on this very topic. Check it out.
Brendan does the Lord’s work.
and damned skippy, he’s right…“These are some of the worst people in the world, and they need to be purged from Congress”.
thanks
Clinton supporters are mighty hard to please. Obama hires a Latino woman from the HRC camp, and they interpret that as a “screw you?”
WTF?
Wait a minute here. Everything I read about Clinton’s senate campaign and her primary campaign that talked about the horrendous amounts of money spent all implied that Solis-Doyle was responsible for the fiscal mismanagement. I mean everything I read. So what’s the real story?
Fire the voters!!!
Imagine this is a hundred years ago and that you are a newly-appointed sales manager. Of a horse-buggy shop. Some people would blame your management for the organization’s substantial losses, for the lack of sales, but the truth of the matter is that you were given the impossible task of selling a product that the public no longer needed or wanted. That is, except for a bevy of working-class whites in rural Pennsylvania…
It’s beginning to look like Bill was the nicest of the bunch!???!
Maybe that was in response to this? This was emailed early today – a friend forwarded me a copy.
“There is no other way to interpret this other than `[Expletive] you.'”
and his point is?
Ingrid